


Phone Calls

by tatooedlaura



Series: Life [9]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 17:03:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8498119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: Never operate heavy machinery while on painkillers ... including a phone ...





	

**Author's Note:**

> sequel to :
> 
> Mama Scully’s Party  
> Morning  
> Underwears  
> Maps  
> Nachos  
> Foul Ball  
> Promises  
> Stay

Skinner called Mulder early the next morning, looking for him because, as inevitably happens, he needed his crack team of Moose and Squirrel to go bust some heads.

Of course, Walter Skinner would never say these words to Mulder, Scully, anyone in the FBI, his friends, his poker buddies or ever outloud but in his head, they were completely Moose and Squirrel to the point that occasionally, when Scully got to rambling in her scientific hell or Mulder drifted too far into his left-field theoretical wonderland, he pretended they had Russian accents and were wearing large, black, furry hats.

He really, really hoped that would never get out.

Anyways …

“Mulder.”

“What?” Mulder normally wouldn’t have answered as such but he was still mostly asleep. The phone had woken him from some psychedelic dream, sending him rolling to the edge of the bed, trying his best to stop the intensely out of place vibrating his left ass cheek was doing. Once he figured it was his phone, he fumbled to retrieve it, forgot how to answer it and finally found the green button that he vaguely recalled meant ‘speak’ on it. Poking the button, then whacking himself in the temple before getting the accursed thing to his ear, he had, by then, lost all patience with the world. The ‘what?’ slipped out before his brain processed it was the boss.

“Excuse me?”

“Hang on a second.” Putting the phone down on the pillow, he untangled the sheets from his legs, pulling Scully onto her back in the process, then, cursing once, somehow managed to get himself into a sitting position. Blowing a loud amount of air out his pursed lips while rubbing his face more awake, he did a final head shake before picking the phone back up, “morning, sir. How are you?”

Skinner, sitting in his office chair, simply shook his head, “from the sounds I just heard, I’m doing better than you are.”

Still digging sleep from his eyes, “but we’re both doing better than Scully is.”  
“What did you do to her now?”

Desperately wanting to either hang up on him or show true, unmitigated abhorance to Skinner’s mere suggestion that he hurt her, he realized the question wasn’t that far off base for 95% of their experiences in the last six years, “honestly, this time it was some asshole, pardon me, some royal asshole at the Nationals game on Saturday who wanted to catch a foul ball, Scully ended up with stitches in the back of her head, a broken cheekbone and a wicked bruise from shoulder to shoulder from when she fell against the cement stairs.”  
Now, he had a fairly high tolerance for Mulder and his crap but Scully he adored to the ends of the Earth, “did you hit him?”

Letting out a barking laugh that surprised all three of them, Mulder patting Scully’s hip with his hand, “I got arrested but Frohike bailed me out.”

“Agent Mulder, I should reprimand you for your actions and be firm in telling you that as a representative of the United Stated Federal Bureau of Investigation, you should mind your actions.”

“I knocked him out, sir.”

“Good.”

Scully, for her part in this whole exchange, lay quietly suffered from the jolt to her back when Mulder accidentally rolled her. Once Mulder finally hung up the phone, however, she first made a groaning growl, then let the tears flow from her eyes, her muscles tight and spasming and throbbing with the pounding of her heart, fast as it was given her muscles continued to seize.

Mulder went from still half-asleep to wide awake and panicking when he finally looked at her, “what the hell? Are you okay? What do you need? What happened?”

She shut him up with a pained look and her hand gripping his knee, squeezing it while she forced her lungs to take deep breathes and think about happy things until she relaxed enough to be able to speak. It took several minutes though and Mulder felt like he was dying with her the entire time. The nails digging into his flesh didn’t help any, either.

Once the tears stopped, she looked at him with fairly focused eyes, “I just had the equivalent of about seven Charlie horses in my back.”

“Oh, shit! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

Loosening her hold on him, “oh, shit, indeed. I’ll forgive you if you can go find me one or three of those muscle relaxant pain killers things they gave me at the hospital?”

Saying ‘I’m sorry’ again, he carefully climbed off the mattress, “I thought you didn’t like taking those?”

“Desperate times call for prescription meds.”

“Gotcha.”

Once she’d taken her pills and Mulder had the heating pad draped across her back given she now lay on her stomach, “what did Skinner want?”

“He wanted us to come in. We need to get the paperwork done from the last case.”

She must have been in too much agony to have processed much of anything she heard at that point, “what did you say?”

“I said I’d be in as soon as I could but you were down for the count.” Resting a hand on her lower back, he rubbed lightly, “you gonna be okay if I leave?  
They’re breathing down Skinner’s neck about it.”

“I can go in with you. I just need to wait for the pills to kick in.”

Tempted to slap her on the butt in amusement, he chose to give her calf a squeeze instead, chuckling, “um, you took two of those things. You’re going to be asleep in about five minutes and probably still asleep when I get back later.”

She blamed the sudden rush of warmth through her body on the overly hot heating pad, “you’re coming back?”

“Of course.” Shooting her a playful smile, he patted her calf this time, “I’ve gotta go though. See if I can get in and out of there fast.”

“Quick like bunny?”

Already off the bed and almost to the hallway, “drugs working already, I see.”

“Possibly.”

When he left ten minutes later, after the world’s fastest shower and teeth cleaning, her eyes were shut and she was breathing deeply, just like all medicated individuals should. Shutting off the heating pad and setting it on the nightstand, he left her cell phone, a glass of water and a package of crackers for if she woke up before he got back.

The problem was, her deep slumber only lasted about an hour.

&&&&&&&&&&&&

Mulder, just arriving in Skinner’s office, feeling awkward and lonely even with Skinner across the desk, felt his phone go off. At least this time, he knew what the vibration was and didn’t freak out, instead holding up a finger to Skinner in apology while he answered, “Scully? You all right?”

“I knocked my crackers on the ground.”

He stopped dead in his tracks, “what?”

Her voice was slurry, filled with sleep and wonder, “my crackers are on the ground, Mulder. I knocked ‘em down.”

Wondering if he should leave Skinner’s office for the rest of this conversation, Skinner gestured him to sit so he did, “I’m in with Skinner, Scully. I can’t help you with your crackers right now. Can you get them yourself?”

“I tried but I stepped on some of them and now there’re crumbs everywhere, all smushed in the carpet.”

“I’ll vacuum them up when I get back later, okay? I have to go now.”

Scully, staring down at the cracker bits all over her socks, “why are there crackers all over the floor?”

He had to smile, “go lay back down, all right? Take a nap.” Hanging up with her, he looked at his boss, “sorry. Scully took a few pain killers and isn’t thinking real straight right now.”

Nodding, “understandable. How much convincing did it take to get her to stay home?”

“Actually, not much at all.”

Settling forward, pen in hand, “that’s good. So, shall we get to work?”

His phone was quiet for the better part of 20 minutes before vibrating again. Pulling it out, he glanced up at Skinner’s raised eyebrow, “sorry. Scully again.”  
Getting a nod, he answered, “hi there.”

“Hi.”

“What’s up?”

Scully, now sitting on the bathmat in the bathroom with the door shut and the light off, stared at the shimmering, fish nightlight that Mulder had slipped in there at some point in the last two years, “what’s the name of your orange fish?”

He shook his head, the smile involuntarily sweeping across his face, “her name is Katherine.”

“Hey, that’s my name!”

“I know it is.”

“Did you name her after me?”

Skinner tapped his pen on the desk to get his attention back, “yeah, I did. Now, Skinner needs me so I’m gonna go. Go take a nap.”

“Okay, Mulder.”

Hanging up a second time, “Sorry. She had a question about my fish.”

“Are you sure you don’t need to go keep her from … hurting herself or something?”

“She’ll be fine. She should be sleeping soon.”

&&&&&&&&&

When his phone went off the third time, there were two other agents in the room, the ones who had first landed the case before Mulder and Scully had been called in to help. They were deep in discussion with Skinner, however, and Mulder decided it would be safe to answer her.

“Why aren’t you asleep yet?”

“I tried, Mulder but I woke up and then I dropped crackers. Did I tell you about the crackers?”

His voice barely above a whisper, “yeah, you did.”

“You know how hard it is to sleep with crackers on the floor?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I don’t recommend it. So then I watched your nightlight fish until I got scared that the fish would get too hot so I unplugged it but then I couldn’t see to get out of the bathroom.”

He had an awful idea of what her next answer would be, “where are you now?”

“In the bathroom. I just told you. It’s too dark to find the doorknob.”

“Why didn’t you just turn the light on?” The dead silence that met him had him palming his forehead, beginning to wonder if leaving her had been such a brilliant idea, “Scully? Turn on the light.”

“I found it!” She sounded far away but very loud in her declaration, which could only mean she set the phone on the ground and shouted once she found the switch. He waited through some shuffling and the metallic crack as she dropped the phone once before getting it back to her ear. Hearing an unmistakable giggle, “if you hadn’t called me, I couldn’t have seen the switch to turn the light on because you made my phone glow all blue-y. I would have been stuck in the bathroom all night long, Mulder. All. Night. Long.”

Slouching in his chair, he rested his head on his fingers, the softest of smiles playing on his lips, “I would have come rescued you. I wouldn’t have left you in the bathroom all night.”

“Promise?”

“I double promise.” Not realizing the three others in the room were now listening, “why don’t you go sit on the couch for awhile, all right? Lay on your left side and put a pillow under your head and put on the Discovery Channel really quiet, okay? Maybe use the plaid afghan, the soft one with the fringe that you like and put that over your feet. You know how cold they get.”

“Ooh, that sounds nice. I’m going to go do that now. Wait for me.”

“Okay, Scully, I’ll wait.”

He could hear her shuffling down the hall and then her soft humming reached his ear as he heard the rustle of blanket and the sigh of couch cushion. It didn’t take long for the TV to drift through the phone, then he heard her soft exhale when she must have finally settled in, “this is nice.”

“I’ll be it is.”

“You should come home and watch TV with me.”

“I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“I’ll wait up for you.”

He didn’t think that would happen so he began talking even quieter, “naw, you should get some sleep before I get there so you’ll be awake while we watch later on.”

“Good idea. I should get some sleep.”

“Yeah, you should. G’night, Scully.”

“G’night, Muller.”

He could hear the slur back in her voice, the slushiness of her words that told him she was on her way back to dreamland.

He adored that voice.

Hanging up yet again, he crashed back to reality at the clearing of Skinner’s throat. Looking up, he saw a look of concession of the man’s face, “sorry. Scully again. I got her to go lie on the couch.”

“You sure she’s okay by herself?”

He half-wondered this himself but nodded anyways, “yeah. She shouldn’t be calling again.”

“Then let’s get this finished up. We won’t need Scully’s reports for a few days as long as we have the rest of the file done.”

“Yes, sir.”

&&&&&&&&&

Two hours and 10 minutes later, Mulder’s foot was bouncing, his pencil was tapping, his papers were crinkling, his knuckles were cracking, his jaw was clenching and his eyes were wandering every three seconds to his silent phone and Skinner had had it. 

Signing the last form, he gestured towards the door with the pen, “would you go check to make sure she hasn’t done something to hurt herself then just … just stay there with her, would you?”

Mulder snapped to attention, “are you sending me home, Skinner? Sir, I mean?”

“Yes. You are not real productive without her and she can’t function in the world without you. You two are a complete mess alone so get out and don’t come back until there are two of you.”

He was out of there like a shot, mumbling his thanks as he disappeared from the room. Skinner could only shake his head, keeping his amusement hidden until he was sure Mulder hadn’t forgotten something and would be returning in the next two minutes.

Right on time, Mulder burst back in, grabbed his phone from the desk then left again without a word.

Now Skinner could laugh in peace.

&&&&&&&&&&&

He didn’t really believe anything had happened to her. He was 99% sure she was sound sleep on the couch, the TV droning quiet in the background, the afghan already flung to the floor.

It was that nagging 1% that had him driving slightly faster than legally responsible and parking a little more crooked than socially acceptable. Letting himself silently into the house, he breathed a sigh he didn’t know he’d been holding when he saw her mop of disheveled red hair peaking from below the edge of the blanket, one foot hanging out, sock dangling precariously from three toes.

It was a very strange feeling to have his heart flutter at the knowledge that she was safe and sound three feet from him, drugged up and snoring but safe.

He liked it.


End file.
